Doctors have unveiled a radical new treatment for brain tumours - a tiny fishing rod.

The system uses nanofibers to drag tumour cells out of the brain.

It takes advantage of the same technique cancer uses to spread to 'lure' the cells away.

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The 'fishing line' inserted into the tumour, which lures cancer cells outside the brain

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The researchers created fibers made from polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer surrounded by a polyurethane carrier.

The fibers, whose surface simulates the contours of nerves and blood vessels that the cancer cells normally follow, were implanted into the brains of rats in which a human GBM tumor was growing.

The fibers, just half the diameter of a human hair, served as tumor guides, leading the migrating cells to a “tumor collector” gel containing the drug cyclopamine, which is toxic to cancer cells.

Experts say the technique could be effective against one of the most aggressive types of cancer, a glioblastoma .

One factor that makes glioblastoma cancers so difficult to treat is that malignant cells from the tumors spread throughout the brain by following nerve fibers and blood vessels to invade new locations.

Now, researchers have learned to hijack this migratory mechanism, turning it against the cancer by using a film of nanofibers thinner than human hair to lure tumor cells away.

'We have designed a polymer thin film nanofiber that mimics the structure of nerves and blood vessels that brain tumor cells normally use to invade other parts of the brain,' said Ravi Bellamkonda, lead investigator and chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

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'The cancer cells normally latch onto these natural structures and ride them like a monorail to other parts of the brain.

'By providing an attractive alternative fiber, we can efficiently move the tumors along a different path to a destination that we choose.'

The technique could be used on tumours in difficult to reach places

Instead of invading new areas, the migrating cells latch onto the specially-designed nanofibers and follow them to a location – potentially outside the brain – where they can be captured and killed.

Using this technique, researchers can partially move tumors from inoperable locations to more accessible ones.

Though it won’t eliminate the cancer, the new technique reduced the size of brain tumors in animal models, suggesting that this form of brain cancer might one day be treated more like a chronic disease.

Ravi Bellamkonda, the lead investigator on the new project to 'fish' for tumours

Details of the technique were reported February 16 in the journal Nature Materials.

Treating the Glioblastoma multiforme cancer, also known as GBM, is difficult because the aggressive and invasive cancer often develops in parts of the brain where surgeons are reluctant to operate.

Even if the primary tumor can be removed, however, it has often spread to other locations before being diagnosed.

The researchers created fibers made from polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer surrounded by a polyurethane carrier.

The fibers, whose surface simulates the contours of nerves and blood vessels that the cancer cells normally follow, were implanted into the brains of rats in which a human GBM tumor was growing.

The fibers, just half the diameter of a human hair, served as tumor guides, leading the migrating cells to a “tumor collector” gel containing the drug cyclopamine, which is toxic to cancer cells.

For comparison, the researchers also implanted fibers containing no PCL or an untextured PCL film in other rat brains, and left some rats untreated. The tumor collector gel was located physically outside the brain.

After 18 days, the researchers found that compared to other rats, tumor sizes were substantially reduced in animals that had received the PCL nanofiber implants near the tumors.

Tumor cells had moved the entire length of all fibers into the collector gel outside the brain.

The new technique might be able to control the growth of inoperable cancers, allowing patients to live normal lives despite the disease.

'If we can provide cancer an escape valve of these fibers, that may provide a way of maintaining slow-growing tumors such that, while they may be inoperable, people could live with the cancers because they are not growing,' he said.

'Perhaps with ideas like this, we may be able to live with cancer just as we live with diabetes or high blood pressure.'